Linda Falkenstein
Hot and sour soup, but subtle.
You could be forgiven for not having noticed ZenZen Taste. The small dining room seems like a bit of an afterthought tacked on to the front of the Asian grocery J & P Fresh Market. And the grocery store, which opened in 2013, is itself easy to miss amid the warehousey jumble that is this section of Watts Road.
Yet ZenZen Taste, which opened in 2015, manages to create a restful, welcoming atmosphere in its small dining room of tans and browns, with a large decorative scroll of Asian characters on one wall and contemporary-looking seating — several booths and a lineup of tables for two.
The long menu is jammed full of everything from pork bung to three cup chicken. The restaurant bills itself as “Chinese fusion cuisine,” but the emphasis is on Sichuan dishes. The “fusion” seems to come from some Taiwanese dishes (like the three cup chicken) and some more Americanized fare (like fried rice). There are oft-seen dishes like hot and sour soup and kung bao chicken. But the most fun comes from trying just about everything else.
Fried spring rolls are smaller here than the nearly burrito-sized cabbage-stuffed egg rolls that have proliferated at American Chinese spots — these rolls have that same familiar thick, crusty fried shell, but the filling is finely ground pork, more like what is often found in a Vietnamese spring roll.
Dumplings come in three varieties: three tasty pork, beef onion, and lamb winter melon. The lamb winter melon feature mild ground lamb with a little peppery spice, but not much winter melon. The three tasty pork dumplings actually appeared to be shrimp and bok choi dumplings (this was a takeout order, so it was too late to ask).
Another appetizer, the century egg with pepper, is a salty egg preserved in an alkaline solution for several weeks — the yolk turns grayish green; the white turns a jellylike translucent brown. It has a texture completely unlike a hardboiled egg, and flavor like the concentrated essence of one.
Hot and sour soup, often an assault of sour, is much more subtle — it’s neither very hot, nor very sour, but full of egg, wood ear mushroom, bamboo and lots of cilantro.
Among the more frequently seen Sichuan dishes, I fell hard for ZenZen Taste’s ma po tofu. This is a dish that seems to vary wildly from restaurant to restaurant, at worst appearing as mushy tofu in a bland brown or reddish sauce. That is a tragedy. Here there is as much rich ground pork as there is silky tofu; the Sichuan peppercorns are ground so coarsely they sometimes crunch, zestily, in a mouthful, and the numbing heat hits the lips, more than the tongue. The intensity creates a flavor almost like menthol. This is a greasy dish, but yes, it’s supposed to be.
An order for three cup chicken came out of the kitchen as the entree called “mouthwatering chicken,” a dish too beautiful to send back — and I couldn’t have been happier. Also sometimes translated as “saliva chicken,” it features pieces of poached chicken prepared so the skin is rich and chewy, then doused in a fire-red chili oil sauce and topped with a graceful garnish dotted with peanuts, ground red chilis and fresh cilantro — sort of an arabesque of heat.
Another dish with classic Sichuan flavors is the stir-fried cauliflower, a seemingly simple creation that’s mostly cauliflower and hot peppers, but with deep roasted cauliflower flavor from a dry-frying technique.
Normally a cucumber salad would calm the palate; here the excellent hot and sour cucumber (served cold) is spicy with red chilis, pickled and full of heat. It’s a change of pace for the tongue, but not exactly a refresher.
Less successful was a stir-fried beef with green pepper; the beef was a bit too charred and too chewy; the peppers cut too large and undercooked. Eggplant with garlic sauce was also undercooked. A better beef dish for lovers of spicy Sichuan would be the more traditional boiled beef with chili sauce or spiced beef with chili sauce, both of which share flavor characteristics with the ma po tofu. Not into beef? The boiled fish in spicy sauce is a good alternative.
There are many more dishes — from salt fish to bullfrog. And next door at the market there’s a prepared-food deli area that has even more items to choose from; you might luck into a day when it’s selling bao, steamed buns filled with barbecued pork or beef, or zongzi, sticky rice dumplings steamed in a leaf. Try something new, there or in the restaurant. Zen mind, beginner’s mind.
ZenZen Taste
6634 Watts Road; 608-316-0188;
11 am-2 pm and 5-9 pm daily; $4-$23
